Masculinity is a dirty word. Often wrapped up in that which is toxic and treated begrudgingly, we find ourselves caught between two extremes: either men are evil or men are beyond reproach. Both positions are absurd and a way out of this thinking was offered by a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst as far back as the late 1980s. Jean Shinoda Bolen sees the women’s movement (of which she was a part) as highlighting the dangers of stereotypes in their distortion and limitation of human potential. Women were becoming aware of how a male dominated culture was affecting them personally. This “consciousness raising” which we owe to those early feminists, is not exclusively for women, as male stereotypes are just as dangerous. By replacing a one-dimensional stereotype with a multi-faceted archetype, Shinoda Bolen makes a strong case (as one early academic review notes) for “a new appreciation for the archetypal masculine principle, without which the equally sacred feminine ceases to have its full meaning and being”.
In the opening of Gods in Everyman: A New Psychology of Men’s Lives and Loves, the author refers to the conformity demanded of men as a Procrustean bed. While the demand of the 1980s man to conform to a Jordan Belfort style culture is a far cry from contemporary culture’s ideal man, demands are still demands. In order to look the part, a person may cut off important aspects of…